1. Field of the Invention
The present invention provides genes and gene sets the expression of which is important in the diagnosis and/or prognosis of breast cancer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Oncologists have a number of treatment options available to them, including different combinations of chemotherapeutic drugs that are characterized as “standard of care,” and a number of drugs that do not carry a label claim for particular cancer, but for which there is evidence of efficacy in that cancer. Best likelihood of good treatment outcome requires that patients be assigned to optimal available cancer treatment, and that this assignment be made as quickly as possible following diagnosis.
Currently, diagnostic tests used in clinical practice are single analyte, and therefore do not capture the potential value of knowing relationships between dozens of different markers. Moreover, diagnostic tests are frequently not quantitative, relying on immunohistochemistry. This method often yields different results in different laboratories, in part because the reagents are not standardized, and in part because the interpretations are subjective and cannot be easily quantified. RNA-based tests have not often been used because of the problem of RNA degradation over time and the fact that it is difficult to obtain fresh tissue samples from patients for analysis. Fixed paraffin-embedded tissue is more readily available and methods have been established to detect RNA in fixed tissue. However, these methods typically do not allow for the study of large numbers of genes (DNA or RNA) from small amounts of material. Thus, traditionally fixed tissue has been rarely used other than for immunohistochemistry detection of proteins.
Recently, several groups have published studies concerning the classification of various cancer types by microarray gene expression analysis (see, e.g. Golub et al., Science 286:531-537 (1999); Bhattacharjae et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:13790-13795 (2001); Chen-Hsiang et al., Bioinformatics 17 (Suppl. 1):S316-S322 (2001); Ramaswamy et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:15149-15154 (2001)). Certain classifications of human breast cancers based on gene expression patterns have also been reported (Martin et al., Cancer Res. 60:2232-2238 (2000); West et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:11462-11467 (2001); Sorlie et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98:10869-10874 (2001); Yan et al., Cancer Res. 61:8375-8380 (2001)). However, these studies mostly focus on improving and refining the already established classification of various types of cancer, including breast cancer, and generally do not provide new insights into the relationships of the differentially expressed genes, and do not link the findings to treatment strategies in order to improve the clinical outcome of cancer therapy.
Although modern molecular biology and biochemistry have revealed hundreds of genes whose activities influence the behavior of tumor cells, state of their differentiation, and their sensitivity or resistance to certain therapeutic drugs, with a few exceptions, the status of these genes has not been exploited for the purpose of routinely making clinical decisions about drug treatments. One notable exception is the use of estrogen receptor (ER) protein expression in breast carcinomas to select patients to treatment with anti-estrogen drugs, such as tamoxifen. Another exceptional example is the use of ErbB2 (Her2) protein expression in breast carcinomas to select patients with the Her2 antagonist drug Herceptin® (Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco, Calif.).
Despite recent advances, the challenge of cancer treatment remains to target specific treatment regimens to pathogenically distinct tumor types, and ultimately personalize tumor treatment in order to maximize outcome. Hence, a need exists for tests that simultaneously provide predictive information about patient responses to the variety of treatment options. This is particularly true for breast cancer, the biology of which is poorly understood. It is clear that the classification of breast cancer into a few subgroups, such as ErbB2+ subgroup, and subgroups characterized by low to absent gene expression of the estrogen receptor (ER) and a few additional transcriptional factors (Perou et al., Nature 406:747-752 (2000)) does not reflect the cellular and molecular heterogeneity of breast cancer, and does not allow the design of treatment strategies maximizing patient response.